


A Million (and One)

by CuriouslyRenault



Category: Harry Potter - JK Rowling, The Marauders - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Love, M/M, Marauders era, Romance, Tragedy, True Love, before azkaban fic, dammit sirius you shouldn't have gone to azkaban, first wizarding war, wolfstar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-07
Updated: 2018-07-07
Packaged: 2019-06-06 23:25:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15205781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CuriouslyRenault/pseuds/CuriouslyRenault
Summary: "There were a million precious seconds that they made together.There were a million things that made them think of home."In which Sirius and Remus go back through their favorite memories of each other, and try not to remember the way it all ended.





	A Million (and One)

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, all! Hopefully this piece is good -- I've been agonizing over it for a couple months now and finally decided it was about time to do something with it. As with any other author, feedback is much appreciated! And I don't own anything but the writing, obviously.
> 
> Also, on a slightly separate note, I have quite a few other works I haven't posted yet and would much appreciate it if anyone out there was willing to look over/beta them for me. It's all just Wolfstar and Gramander shipping. I'm not sure if you can directly message people on here (I'm kinda new to Ao3), but if you can't, just leave a comment if you're interested and we can work out communication!
> 
> I'll stop rambling now. Thanks and enjoy!

_There were a million precious seconds that they made together._

_There were a million things that made them think of home._

 

**_Sirius._ **

_Remus’ eyelashes, snowflakes on the tips, his mouth wide open in laughter at one of Sirius’ jokes and his head tipped back, free for a split second from the carefully placed tension in his body every other moment of the day._

It was the first Christmas the Marauders had all spent together in one place, and they were fourteen. They were babies -- could barely spell the word _love_ yet, couldn’t hardly define it, but Sirius knew exactly what he felt in his chest when he saw Remus like that.

 

**_Remus._ **

Sirius, helping a homesick first-year laugh by referencing Frog and Toad. _“‘‘What you see is the clear warm light of April. And it means that we can begin a whole new year together, Toad.’”_ The first-year girl laughed, a little, and Sirius’ grey eyes were warm when he wiped her last tears away with his thumb. _“‘We will skip through the meadows and run through the woods and swim in the river. In the evenings, we will sit right here on this front porch and count the stars.’”_

And then Sirius looked up and saw Remus peeking around a corner, and he smiled like the sun itself. “Frog and Toad are friends,” he said softly, his eyes were on Remus, and the werewolf felt something curl in his stomach, warm and sweet. “Will you be my friend?”

Remus and the first-year both nodded with a smile.

  


**_Sirius._ **

_Remus’ fifteenth birthday was right after a particularly bad full moon, and he was still laid up in the hospital wing. All day he’d been grumpy and denying his ill-disguised frustration at the situation. The hassle of the invisibility cloak (and later on, detention for being out of bed) was worth it in the Marauders’ opinions when Remus opened his eyes at midnight to see them surrounding his bed and a glowing birthday cake balanced on his lap. The candlelight reflected off his amber eyes in the dark, making them shiny and wide. Or was that tears?_

_“You’re going to get in trouble,”_ the sleepy Remus, a bandage wrapped around his forehead, had mumbled when he woke. “ _It’s worth it, for you,”_ Sirius had said without thinking. _“It’s always worth it for you.”_

And none of them mentioned that they now knew it was definitely tears that splashed onto his hospital nightgown.

  


**_Remus._ **

_Sirius was beautiful when he danced, all grace and elegance and yet some sort of wild untamed ferocity that Remus knew he could never hope to replicate with his old-man bones. But when Sirius spun out from the crowd, his hand out, his eyes alight with true joy -- “A dance, Moony?” -- Remus figured that he wouldn’t mind giving dancing a chance, if it made Sirius smile like that._

Remus had been left alone on the outskirts of the crowd, but with a glass of firewhiskey in one hand and his favorite sweater, he didn’t really mind. The Gryffindor House Cup Victory Party, in the works since the first moment they returned to school in September, had been something they’d all looked forward to as “the best end-of-year-bash ever!” (James’ statement, not Remus’.) Remus hadn’t thought it would be this good, honestly, but he was having a decent time considering, the firewhiskey lightening both his mood and inhibitions (he’d blame the whiskey for events occurring later). It was made even better when Sirius broke apart from the girl he’d been twirling and made his way to the werewolf, his eyes flashing with joy. “Moony, babe!”

“Sirius."

“Lighten up a little, eh? A dance, Moony?”

The song playing from one of the girls’ record player changed to a slow, romantic one, and _still_ Sirius was looking at him like that, his hand outstretched to take his, his lips curved in that way he knew Remus could never resist.

Remus had hesitated, but then Sirius had taken his glass from him to place it on the floor and pulled him into his chest to sway, gently, his hand on the small of Remus’ back, and as Remus rested his head against Sirius’ shoulder (he had to stoop a little, tall as he was), he knew it wasn’t the firewhiskey making his chest feel like this.

 

_“When my legs don’t work like they used to before,_

_And I can’t sweep you off of your feet._

_Will your mouth still remember the taste of my love?_ _  
_ _Will your eyes still smile from your cheeks?”_

  


**_Sirius._ **

_Remus’ fingers seemed to be forever hurting him, arthritic and worn from the transformations as they were, but they were quick and deft and beautiful in scholarly movement. Sirius couldn’t remember a time when they hadn’t been spotted with ink from a quill or a bright splash of color from the Muggle markers he loved so._

_His hand was warm every time Sirius held it._

During History of Magic, Sirius had known that it wasn’t going to be a good day for Remus. Still a week from the full moon and he was already looking gaunter and paler than usual, and he wasn’t taking notes on the goblin revolutions like he normally would. (In the back of Sirius’ head, he questioned how the werewolf could bear to spend so much time in pain. A week a month seemed impossible to deal with.) Remus was massaging his hands gently and staring out the window, brow creased gently in frustration.

He was scared it would be too forward, but he couldn’t regret the way Remus’ dazed eyes widened and then filled with warmth when Sirius leaned over and took his hand, beginning to rub small circles into his wrists. They stayed that way for the rest of class. Both of them received only _A_ , Acceptable, grades on the next goblin revolutions essay, but Sirius wouldn’t have traded the feeling of Remus’ rough palms and long fingers in his for a million Outstandings. From the affectionate look Remus had given him after they received their parchment back, for the first time, he seemed to agree.

(As the years wore on and as the two boys came to grips with their mutual crushes, the exact dimensions of Remus’ hand would become even more familiar to Sirius -- _ink spotted fingers in his hair, tickling his sides, fitting perfectly into his own hand as they walked side-by-side, wrapped around his throat as they cried out together.)_

  


**_Moony and Padfoot._ **

 

_The last time Sirius saw Remus before Azkaban, it had been just after he’d seen James and Lily die, and he knew that he would never get to marry Remus like he’d been planning to since sixth year. Knew that there wouldn’t be any more Sirius and Remus after this. Knew that he’d have to leave the only people he’d ever loved behind -- one dead, one hopefully dead after Sirius got to him, one alone. Knew that he’d be alone in Azkaban, the same way that Remus would be alone here, both of them drowning in their ghosts._

_He only hoped that Remus knew how to swim._

But he couldn’t bear the thought of not making one last good memory to sustain him in there, to keep him at least a little longer in the delusion that it ever could have lasted. That they weren’t ripped apart by mistrust and misplaced anger, in the end. That they’d have the forever they deserved. Apparating straight to their flat in the middle of the night probably wasn’t the smartest decision, and probably lost him time, but _Lord,_ he couldn’t bear the thought of losing the only one he’d ever really loved. Remus lay asleep on his dusty old couch (God, he still remembered when they picked it out together at that horrible junk shop just after Hogwarts, Remus had insisted they find the cheapest one within a fifty-mile radius -- _no, he absolutely was not crying_ ), and when Sirius stood over him, his face was worn and scarred. He felt his heart break a little because they should have been having fun and being reckless but instead they were dying and withering away, old souls in the age of _young._

 

Sirius leaned down to kiss his forehead, gently, and whisper, _“I love you”_ for the first time.

\---

 

When Remus woke up the next morning, he didn’t know why there was a faint pink imprint of lips on his forehead or why his lips tasted like salt, reminiscent of tears. He didn’t understand what was printed in the newspaper as facts. He didn’t know why Dumbledore had come to see him dressed in a somber face and black robes, had come to tell him that his life had fallen apart overnight. _Didn’t know why no one else remembered a million precious moments with his love, a million things that reminded him of the only home he could ever really claim as his._

But most of all, Remus couldn’t understand why he knew in his heart that Sirius was gone, but every time he went back to those old memories of them, he still felt of _home._ Because Sirius was home, for Remus, and he always had been.

 

After he left, Remus’ nights were spent in the company of drugs and young boys with leather jackets that reminded him both too much and not enough of Sirius. He threw out the coffee cup he’d left sitting out. He stared at the place where the wood was stained on his kitchen table because Sirius had always forgotten to put a _goddamn coaster_ down (and privately, he believed, for a few days, that maybe if Remus had just made him put a coaster down instead of falling to his charms like always things could still be okay).

 

Remus shredded the couch cushions in a fit of rage while he cried.

Sirius made ticks in the wall of his damp cell with Padfoot’s nails.

  
Remus shattered the old big band records they used to dance to, throwing another every time he remembered that no one was there to stop him now.

Sirius screamed until he couldn’t speak.

Remus drank himself unconscious until he ran out of cheap beer.

 

_And neither of them ever felt like he was home again._

 

Even when they met again twelve years later, their gazes were filled with regret, their touches with pain, and when Remus broke down upon seeing Sirius’ face they both knew that there were some mutual wounds that could never be healed.

 

_There were a million precious seconds that they made together._

_There were a million things that made them think of home._

 

**_But there were a million and one moments, in the end, and sometimes that last one can change everything._ **


End file.
